In the prior art, network functions are all implemented by network devices specific to or specifically designed by manufacturers, and there is an ultrastrong coupling relationship between the network and the network devices, which brings great inconvenience in practical applications. On the one hand, when performance of the network devices is improved, it is required that performance of carrier-grade reliability hardware of the network devices be improved while specific or customized requirements of the network functions are met, or newly designed network devices with dedicated functions be pre-deployed while new services are deployed by operators, which will obviously increase service deployment cost of the operators. On the other hand, with the rapid improvement of performance of central processing units (CPU) and memories, a basic condition for running of the network functions in the form of software on universal servers is provided, and a network function virtualization (NFV) technology emerges as the times require. A main function of the NFV is to run the network functions on the universal servers to implement large-scale service deployment, such that capital expenditure (CAPEX) can be reduced and at the same time the network functions can be deployed and updated according to requirements, thereby facilitating remote management and maintenance and reducing operating expense (OPEX).
After introduction of the NFV technology, the network functions of the network devices will be implemented on virtualized network functions (VNF), which may be regarded as application layers of the VNFs. Each VNF may implement different network functions according to specific configuration information. After introduction of the NFV, the management architecture of the existing network also changes a lot. A schematic diagram of an architecture and reference point for network function virtualization management and orchestration (NFV-MANO) is as shown in FIG. 1, herein a network functions virtualization orchestrator (NFVO) is responsible for functions such as lifecycle management of network services, network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) resource scheduling of a cross-virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM), etc., and a virtualized network functions manager (VNFM) is responsible for lifecycle management of the VNFs. Each VNF instance is supposed to have an associated VNFM, and the virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) is responsible for controlling and managing computing, storage and network resources of the NFVI. According to ETSI GS NFV-MANO 001, application layer configuration of the VNF instance may be included in a VNF package, and the VNFM may acquire configuration information from the VNF package and send it the VNF, or may also transmit it from an EMS to the VNF in a traditional manner. The requirements implemented through the traditional manner come from the case where hybrid networking of virtualized network devices and physical network devices will occur in a process of gradual virtualization of the network devices. At this point, application layer configuration information of the virtualized network devices is required to be able to be managed by the traditional network management architecture to facilitate unified operation and maintenance.
The traditional network management structure is usually a three-layer management structure including a network management system (NMS)/operation support system (OSS), an EMS and network devices, herein an interface between the NMS and the EMS is a northbound interface, and an interface between the EMS and the network devices is a southbound interface. The network management system will model each type of the network devices as a management information object class on the northbound interface, each of the network devices will have an information object instance of an object class which it belongs to, represented by a distinguish name (DN), and the information object instance contains configuration information of its corresponding network device. The management system completes management of the configuration information of the network devices by creation, deletion and updating operations of the information object instances, and the network devices, as management entities, will not change dynamically.
After the network devices are virtualized, the network functions are implemented on the VNFs, and the configuration information of the network functions is also valid only within the lifecycle of the VNFs. Lifecycle management of the VNFs includes Instantiate VNF, Terminate VNF, Scale VNF and Update VNF, etc. If the traditional network management systems are used to perform configuration management on the network functions provided by the VNFs, the configuration management of the network functions is required to be associated with the lifecycle management of the VNFs. However, configuration management functions of the traditional network management systems can not meet configuration management requirements of the network functions provided by the VNFs.